Aurora trout are generally without spots, the colouration grading from a magenta hue on the back to a bright, nearly fluorescent orange along the belly, especially in mature males.

The subspecies was extirpated from the original lakes by the ravages of acid rain in the late 1950s, but was saved from extinction by Paul Graf, a hatchery manager at the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

He sometimes feared the fish might have been taking up valuable space in the hatchery and, on several occasions, thought about getting rid of them, until they were found to have been extirpated from the wild.

[citation needed] Naturalised populations of aurora trout have been introduced into about a dozen lakes in northeastern Ontario as refugia.

In the late 1980s, the original lakes were treated with lime to raise the pH to circumneutral conditions, and aurora trout were reintroduced.